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Audra McDonald Brings the House Down

Mar 17th 2013

Last night, at her closing performance at the Festival of the Arts, Audra McDonald told a rapt audience about her youngest critic. It was her then 3-year-old daughter, who McDonald says delivered this quip, cleverer beyond her years: “Mommy, your singing makes my ears cry.”

Hundreds of ears left happy and wanting more at the Mizner Park Amphitheater last night after a dynamic concert of moving ballads, jaunty numbers and humorous anecdotes from the five-time Tony winner’s life and work. She shared some of the stories behind the tunes she chose – one of them dates serendipitously to an encounter with a street karaoke performer in Cambridge, and another she discovered as background music in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days” – engaging us every time.

What was most distinctive about McDonald’s concert was the lack of familiar songs, a decision that could torpedo a less magnetic performer. She didn’t even play any hits from “Porgy & Bess” and “Ragtime,” for which she won awards. Her selections instead ran an obscure but compelling gamut from vintage movie musicals to newer Broadway cult hits, conveying their songwriters’ messages with such passion and kineticism that it’s hard to believe she didn’t star in the original productions.

Moreover, these renditions made us want to discover these musicals ourselves and hear the songs in their original contexts. Two standing ovations concluded the show, which, to my eyes, was under-attended … but it capped off what many would agree is the best Festival of the Arts yet. Here was her set list: